If you want a comet to chase then its time to switch to C/2012 K5 (LINEAR) as Hergenrother fades away - from now and next month its brightening fast - peaking possibly near mag 8 on New Years day. For the last four weeks it has been tracking slowly over the shoulder of Bootes while turning to line up with Ursa Major. It will soon track through the Big Dipper/Plough tracing a path from the tip of the great bear's tail to the tip of it's nose.

However it initially favours those in the far north best as its extremely low or even set for most of the night for those at lower latitudes during November and the early/mid period of December. Right now its in the process of switching from a predominantly evening object to a morning object.

During the last few days of December and all of January its all-night visibility vastly improves as it rapidly races through Lynx, Auriga, Taurus and the Orion/Eridanus border before slowing to a crawl again and turning east under Orion.

Trying several mornings already to catch him for a first observation, but still bad weather. Anyway, my applet with comet positions on a simulated night sky is also extended with this comet C/2012 K5, also showing which deepsky objects shall stand close to it, there are some interesting ones. Hopefully an easy target this new comet!

Got my first look at C/2012 K5 (LINEAR) this morning. It took a while for Bootes to rise above the mountain to my NE so I didn't have much time to look before the sky began to lighten. The zodiacal light was very prominent this morning too--glad the comet is not over in that part of the sky.

I first picked it up at 75x--not real bright but definitely not hard to spot (especially with dark, transparent skies).

The comet is pretty well condensed with a fan shaped tail. Hopefully this one will be fun to chase--thanks for the heads up Tony and thanks also to Curt for the charts.

I read a report on the Yahoo comet obs group that this comet's tail was at position angle 20°. I put it at PA 340°. One of us is confused--not sure who.

340° would have been about right. Position angle is measured counterclockwise from celestial north. Your Yahoo source may have mistakenly measured clockwise, or perhaps meant -20° which is equivalent to +340°.

I read a report on the Yahoo comet obs group that this comet's tail was at position angle 20°. I put it at PA 340°. One of us is confused--not sure who.

340° would have been about right. Position angle is measured counterclockwise from celestial north. Your Yahoo source may have mistakenly measured clockwise, or perhaps meant -20° which is equivalent to +340°.

Thanks for the confirmation, Curt. My source posted another more recent observation with the PA of the tail at 350°. He was using an SCT and might have forgotten he had a mirror-reversed view. More likely, I checked back and his observation was 10 days before mine and the PA might have shifted over that time. His more recent obs was the same date as mine and we are within 10° and both to the west.

Sorry no - I'm making an effort to get the data but I've too little time to go through the processing steps though. I'm currently under the whip from my PhD supervisors so I have to deliberately avoid distractions . I could slap up a rough "straight from camera" if you just want to have a look. Hopefully Mike B will do the honors with his efforts as I know he will turn his sights to this one soon

I managed to get a 8 30 second subs on the morning of the26th just before sunrise. the comet has a good definednucleus and a bit of a tail showing. The star to the rightof the comet is magnitude 12.7 Hopefully darker skies ina week or two will allow a another attempt.

I had some clear weather this morning so I took a peek at 05:30 UT. This comet is shaping up, estimate a 10' fan tail and bright nucleus around mag 8 to 9 ish. Prelimiary images show greenish small coma. Nearly overhead at onset of twilight at 07:00. Cresent moon, Venus and Mercury low to SE were fantastic too. Worth getting up for!

I had a good look at it last night with a 20" f/4 Dob at 80x under rather poor SQM 21.0 skies. The comet was still at only about 15° altitude and inside a light dome, but a very condensed coma and a curved fan tail, about 10' long were easily visible. It would certainly have looked much better later in the night at a higher elevation, but still, quite an impressive sight. Had 11x70 and 20x110 binos ready, but after 6 hours in -13 °C and 50 cm of snow I wasn't too keen on waiting for another 2-3 hours Clear skies!Jure